So, the biggest acquisition in Microsoft's history. The Wall Street Journal reports - and it has been confirmed - that Microsoft and Skype will announce today that Redmond will buy Skype for $8.5 billion. That's a lot of money for a company that hasn't ever actually made any profits. Update:and it's official: yay on Skype on the Xbox360 and Windows Phone, and this: "Microsoft will continue to invest in and support Skype clients on non-Microsoft platforms." Let's hope this includes Linux.

I don't think the audio codec is important. There's PLENTY of perfectly good audio codecs already available and as far as I know, Skype's one doesn't really provide measurably better quality than the others.

I'd have to agree. I think it's the infrastructure around it and cross platform support that really adds the value. For cross platform, it seems to be pretty close to Keepass and it's 20 or so different supported platforms. For infrastructure, someone would need to at least provide the POTS bridging back end.

Cross platform could be solved by providing a truly open source stack that any OS distro can implement including Win/osX and the mobile platforms.

POTS bridging.. well maybe some company takes interest or some hackerspace has suffciently motivated members. It could suppliment rent and internet connection depending on how much the phone carriers are going to charge for playing nice.